That's a strange article. He's upset at "cranks" saying that Perl 6 isn't Perl anymore. His argument seems to rest on two things:
1. There were a lot of changes from Perl 4 to Perl 5, and people didn't say that wasn't Perl any more. So, a lot of change from 5 to 6 is the same.
2. Larry says it is Perl.
The second argument works, at least--Larry is the one with the naming rights.
However, the author states this:
There are those who will read this and say "Yeah, but Perl
5 could still pretty much run any Perl 4 program, but
Perl 6 won't be able to run Perl 5." And that's true.
That seems to me to be a pretty fundamental difference between the 4 to 5 step and the 5 to 6 step. With 4 to 5, essentially a bunch of new features became available, and you could start adding them incrementally to your existing programs.
It sounds like 5 to 6 is, practically, from the programmer's point of view, no different than a transition from Perl to Ruby, or Perl to Python, etc.. That is, it involves learning a new language (and if Perl 6 won't run Perl 5 code than it IS a new language, despite having the same name), and writing new code for it or porting old code.
If you think of a language as merely a bag of syntax, than Perl 5 and Perl 6 are very different. (You can make the same argument about a lot of versions of a lot of languages.)
If you think of a language as a design philosophy expressed in semantics and syntax -- and a guide to choosing to make the corresponding tradeoffs -- then the "The syntax is very different, thus it's a different language!" argument doesn't work.
Various implementations of Lisps and Schemes are recognizable as Lisps and Schemes for a reason.
1. There were a lot of changes from Perl 4 to Perl 5, and people didn't say that wasn't Perl any more. So, a lot of change from 5 to 6 is the same.
2. Larry says it is Perl.
The second argument works, at least--Larry is the one with the naming rights.
However, the author states this:
That seems to me to be a pretty fundamental difference between the 4 to 5 step and the 5 to 6 step. With 4 to 5, essentially a bunch of new features became available, and you could start adding them incrementally to your existing programs.It sounds like 5 to 6 is, practically, from the programmer's point of view, no different than a transition from Perl to Ruby, or Perl to Python, etc.. That is, it involves learning a new language (and if Perl 6 won't run Perl 5 code than it IS a new language, despite having the same name), and writing new code for it or porting old code.